The Summer of Our Discontent
What a week. Two sessions of the January 6th committee’s hearings and no fewer than four major Supreme Court rulings, culminating in yesterday’s expected but nonetheless devastating reversal of Roe v. Wade. There’s a lot to be angry about, there’s a lot to be upset about, there’s a lot to be sad about. It’s been a rough week.
Let’s start with the January 6th committee’s hearings. Of the first five sessions, this week’s two presentations were my favorites since the very first. Tuesday’s focus was on the pressure Trump and company placed on state election officials to interfere in the results. This could be anything from “finding” non-existent votes, dismissing legitimate votes, questioning the validity of vote tallies, to certifying fake electors. Trump and his team were methodical and persistent in this effort. The testimony of three Republican election officials (Arizona’s Rusty Bowers as well as Brad Raffensperger and Gabriel Sterling, both from Georgia) clearly and concisely outlined the pressure they were under, and they weren’t even the most compelling witness that day.
After hearing testimony from those three white men, the committee questioned Shaye Moss, a Black election worker from Georgia who was at the Fulton County center to tabulate votes. Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, were personally called out by Trump for supposed fraud — accusations that were, of course, completely made up. Moss’ testimony, as well as clips of her mother’s recorded deposition, painted a harrowing picture. Both women are afraid to go out in public for fear that other people (i.e. MAGA freaks) will discover who they are and further intimidate them.
So that was Tuesday. On Thursday the focus was on Trump’s attempt to install a yes-man (Jeff Clark) as the acting Attorney General. Trump wanted Clark to open investigations into supposed instances of voter fraud in several key states. The idea here wasn’t so much to uncover actual voter fraud (since an inconsequential number of such cases existed) but rather to create the appearance of suspicion. If the DOJ made it seem like election results were questionable then it would be enough for states to go back and recertify votes for Trump.
In the end this didn’t happen, and it’s mostly thanks to then-acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen and then-acting deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue. Both men looked into claims of voter fraud, found nothing consequential, and shored up enough support among DOJ leadership that, had Trump gone ahead with his plan, there would have been a mass exodus of high-level officials at the DOJ resigning in protest.
Thursday’s hearing was also surprisingly funny, particularly in regard to Jeff Clark’s complete lack of credentials for running the DOJ. Clark was an environmental lawyer who had never even led a criminal investigation. One of my favorite lines from the hearing was when someone said that the only thing environmental law and election law have in common is that they both start with the letter E — but Jeff Clark probably didn’t even know that.
The real bombshell was at the end of the roughly two and a half hour session. The committee’s two lone Republican members, Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, called out a handful of their Republican colleagues who requested pardons for their actions in the attempted insurrection — a tacit acknowledgement that they knew what they did was somehow wrong or illegal. This list included: Mo Brooks, Louie Gohmert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Andy Biggs, Scott Perry, and Matt Gaetz.
As I mentioned earlier, I’ve seen all five sessions so far, and this week’s were some of the very best. I’m impressed with the committee for two main reasons: First, it’s amazing how incredibly thorough their investigation has been. The information they’ve uncovered, the timelines they’ve reconstructed, the conversations they’ve pieced together — it’s an extraordinary amount of research. They’ve taken all that raw information and have crafted these very focused presentations. Their arguments are clear, direct, and supported by the evidence. So that’s the first reason I’m impressed.
The second reason I’ve been impressed is that they very wisely chose to use Trump’s inner circle against him. These aren’t leftist critics of Trump but members of Trump’s own party. It’s easy for the right-wing media to denounce someone like Adam Schiff or Jamie Raskin, but it’s a lot harder when the people testifying against Trump are deeply, deeply Republican loyalists like Bowers. (Although it’s important to remember that even though Bowers said Trump’s actions were “horrendous” and “terrible,” he’d still vote for Trump again.)
Which brings me to an interesting duality this committee has forced me to confront. It’s very strange for me to think of someone like Liz Cheney as a hero. On the one hand, she seems to be one of the very few sane Republicans. On the other hand she’s the daughter of Dick Cheney. She came out as being against same-sex marriage even though her sister is queer. She doesn’t think waterboarding is a form of torture. Politically, I doubt there’s anything we would see eye to eye on, and yet she’s also brave and courageous. She might be heroic, but she’s no hero. And that’s been hard for me to wrap my head around.
Let’s move on to the Supreme Court. Tuesday saw the 6-3 ruling in Carson v. Makin. All six conservative-leaning judges blurred the lines between Church and State when they ruled that a Maine program which excluded religious schools from state tuition programs was unconstitutional. This means that taxpayer money can now fund religious education. That was strike one.
Strike two was on Thursday. There were actually two big rulings released that day, but one of them (rightfully) got more attention than the other. I’ll start with the one everyone was talking about: New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which said that states (like New York) which impose strict limits on carrying guns in public violate the 2nd Amendment. This was another 6-3 decision going along party lines, and it will make it much harder for blue states to impose any kind of meaningful gun control. This is a bad decision for many reasons, some of which I discussed in my last article.
The second ruling from Thursday was Vega v. Tekoh. This case involved a Los Angeles deputy named Carlos Vega who investigated claims of sexual assault by a hospital worker named Terence Tekoh. When Vega went to the hospital to question Tekoh, he never advised Tekoh of his Miranda rights. Thus, Tekoh didn’t remain silent, he didn’t ask for a lawyer, and he eventually signed a confession letter. Tekoh was ultimately acquitted of sexual assault charges, but he sued Vega for violating his Constitutional right to a Miranda warning. The Supreme Court sided with Vega, indicating that a lack of a Miranda warning (you know, the thing you’ve probably memorized from any number of cop shows and movies: “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in court…”) does not constitute a violation of the 5th Amendment’s right against self-incrimination. That’s a pretty shocking claim, and it’s another example of how our rights as citizens are slowly being chipped away and eroded. It lays the groundwork for future cases that could go even further in rolling back our rights.
Which brings us to yesterday’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, aka the ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade. This was strike three. As historian Heather Cox Richardson points out, this ruling was the first time in our nation’s history that the Supreme Court stripped away a constitutional right — one that was almost 50 years old. This had never happened before. It’s unprecedented.
I’m still processing the news. There’s a lot to read, a lot to think about. A lot of people much smarter than me have already written about this. I urge you to read the Heather Cox Richardson newsletter I linked to above, as well as this article from The New Yorker by Jia Tolentino and Jamelle Bouie’s short newsletter from today.
One thing I’ve been thinking about is whether the Supreme Court was justified in doing what they did, especially when public support for a woman’s right to choose routinely clocks in around 75% or higher. I’ve heard this expressed as: “Well, they’re not elected, but the people who appointed them were elected, so…” There are two things I’d say to this argument.
The first is from Heather Cox Richardson again. She points out that the historical basis for these rulings is ahistorical. Take the New York gun case, for example. It wasn’t until 2008’s D.C. v. Heller that the 2nd Amendment was interpreted as protecting gun rights for individuals. So when Supreme Court judges misread or ignore legal precedent, they’re cherry picking history as it suits their end goal, not using history to guide their decision.
And second, it’s also very important to look at the process of nominating Supreme Court justices. All four of this week’s rulings were split 6-3 along party lines. But think about how differently the math would work if the Republicans hadn’t interfered with the judicial nomination process. Antonin Scalia died in February 2016 during Obama’s last year as president. And yet the Republicans blocked Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, because they wanted to wait out the clock in hopes that a Republican would win the 2016 election. They were right about that, so rather than having Obama replace Scalia’s seat with Garland, Trump got to put in place Gorsuch. But then Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September 2020, at a point after early/mail-in ballots had been sent out. If the Republicans didn’t allow Obama to nominate a replacement for Scalia that early in an election year, why did they rush through Barrett’s nomination when an election was actively underway? Because they wanted to secure one more seat.
If Gorsuch and Barrett’s seats had instead been appointed by Obama and Biden, the math would be substantially different. Very likely each of these cases would go 5-4 in the opposite direction. And even if Garland went in instead of Gorsuch and Barrett still got in, yes, these cases would likely rule in the same direction, but I don’t think the Supreme Court would be quite so brash with a 5-4 split. Roberts has proven he can be swayed toward the center, so it wouldn’t guarantee that all rulings would go 5-4 in favor of the conservatives; some might go 5-4 against the conservatives.
Anyway, it’s been a hell of a week. I hope you’re resting up, because we’ve got a lot of work to do.
